Using ICT to Inspire and Engage

Posted by : Unknown Minggu, 26 Juni 2016

vUsing ICT to Inspire and Engage

Inspiration is one key ingredients for creativity. Sometime it has a short-term effect but it can also be the slow- burning fuel or artistic endeavors that last for years.

By contrast engagement is short-term – it’s what holds attention of a class during a lesson, with those unmistakable or task-symptoms of focus, rapt listening and energetic responses to teacher instruction. Once a class is engaged, the process teaching becomes one of steering rather than driving guiding rather than motivating. Inspiration and engagement are linked one fosters the others.

In this regard , from their first introduction into classroom as teaching tools , computer have been useful. They seemed to carry with them an immediate guarantee engagement .A fractious, bored class suddenly became keen. The symptoms looked familiar too. With all the appearance of real engagement.

However, although the symptoms seem. We need to be a quite critical of the apparent engagement afforded by ICT in the English classroom. We need to be able to discern the difference between enthusiasm for the technology ( quite unrelated to the content of the activity ) and real intellectual engagement with the content of the lesson.

The truth is that corpus linguistics researcher have developed extremely powerful analytical tools for us , and if we to make any prediction about the future , their influence in education is set to grow exponentially –not just to empower teachers , but also to inspire and motivate learners. Inspiration is a much tougher test for the use of ICT.

In this chapter we want to maintain a critical stance while suggesting some genuinely inspirational approaches . They have the advantages of ensuring engagement too.

vHow can ICT help to inspire and engage

The trick, as implied in the introduction to this chapter is to focus on the content and the activity rather than the technology . The aim should be to find applications that have the greatest intellectual impact – without the upstaging effect of distracting and ultimately irrelevant digital packaging.

This chapter will explore the use of random function effects applied to English – electronic ‘dice throwing’ since the introduction of computers to the classroom, it has proved to be very fruitful source of novel approaches

The first program for English that used random functions was a little activity designed by Anita striker for the BBC ‘B’ machine , called wordplay you typed in four lists of word sorted by word class , Specified the order that these classes would appear and then the program would generate random combinations of words to that recipe in the form of little ‘poems’ it a word was misplaced ( an adjective in the verb list ) then it would sound wrong when it appeared –so you would go back to the source list and edit away until the program produced valid results. Often what was produced had an unexpected quality , frequently delightful – surprising images generated by the accidental confrontation of word with word.

Using a computer to drive the activity has several advantages

- Speed

- Richness of the input list

- Ability to alter the input recipe easily , to change the pattern on words

- Ability to manipulate , edit , and save the results

- Ability to print

- Ability to mark and map each word class with a colored background

So there have been a number of experiments with random function for English in school A brief history of runs like this:

- Anita Strikers wordplay

- Michael green story starter fruit machine (produced by actis)

- Word spin (produced by actis)

- Word whiz (produced by Teachit)

v The Story Starter Fruit Machine by Michael Green.

The player is presented with the familiar four wheels of classic fruit machine. Above wheels there are four yellow buttons representing four story genres; Horror; science fiction; Real Life; Romance. A player can select or de select these buttons to procedure a story recipe. The ingredient can all come from one genre, or if a combination of genres is selected, the result is a random mixture. The four wheels represent four key components of a narrative.Who (main character), Where (location), Why(quest or problem),What(key item).

When the big PLAY button is pressed all the four wheels spin showing words instead of the little usual colored symbols. If a player doesn’t like the outcome, it is possible to spin the wheels against: Hold or Nudge one of the wheels. Finally the player clicks on Collect and program procedure the recipe.

Example

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When I first saw Michael’s application I was amused and felt drawn to play with the combinations, but privately that it was a bit trivial. I had no idea how powerful this little program was until I tried it out in a live lesson on hot Saturday afternoon in Ron corn city Learning Center.

Why do such activities achieve this effect? I believe it is partly the puzzle effect. If we are presented with a range of random element and challenged to combine them into a coherent story, we find ourselves engaged in the whole process of narrative construction. Instead of the daunting blank sheet we have a scaffold to work on. The actual input from the computer is minimal the effect is to generate maximum mental and intellectual activity . contrast this with the sensory boom bombardment of some multimedia programs and the comparatively poor creative activity they generate.

v Teachit’s Wordwhiz

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Developed by Apogee Software Productions and published by Apogee Software Productions, Word Whiz is a educational game revolving around foreign language, reading / writing, It was published in 1990 and Word Whiz is a word challenge game that can measure your knowledge of the English language. You must pick the right synonym or definition of the highlighted word from four multiple choices. There are hundred words presented per volume, with a total of four volumes. You can continue playing until you miss twenty questions. And flash application of Word Whiz is available to Teachit subscribers. At the very least it is a marvelous way of allowing students to “play” with grammatical structures in an experimental fashion. In so doing, word classes that have been learnt as definitions (a noun is a naming word) begin to be part of a language logic- they start to make sense. Word whiz allows you to copy the output to a word processor for final editing.

There are three variations to play with (the current version does not give use-access to the world lists that drive the program) :

- Insult Whiz

- Haiku Whiz

- Title Whiz

Insult Whiz is loaded with compilation of Shakespeare’s most insulting vocabulary. if you want to you can use six or seven adjectives in front of the noun, you can try adjectives on their own, you can build a crescendo of insult, or inject a stinging ‘last word’.

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Pressing the orange ‘Whiz’ button generate the randomized utterance.

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Press Whiz again a completely new insult. Click ‘edit’ to change the template :

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Haiku Whiz takes the whole game up to its ultimate expression – not only do you have to arrange the word classes to make sense, you also have to count syllables .

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The result are frequently bizarre, but often surprisingly lyrical.

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The word classes are color-coded, so you can see their position and influence .

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If you like a word, or a series of words, you can see freeze them by clicking on them. When you click Whiz everything spins except the frozen words . Thus, progressively you can work towards a form that you like.

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In class this can be done using an interactive whiteboard, and each selection can be discussed. the kind of talk that helps verbal develops students’ ability to edit their own work.

Title Whiz, The inspiration for title whiz was the strong set of word patterns found in books titles, some authors exploit this feature, they use the same formula for each new book and endeavor to make a particular pattern their own. Simply select a genre (children's stories, fantasies or thrillers), and a new title will be created.

To crease the Title Whiz, almost 20,000 fantasy and thriller titles and over 8000 from children’s books were collected. Sifted and sorted, isolating the most common patterns. The classic three-word title (‘the’ followed by a qualifying word and a main word) proved to be most frequent, and other forms are often variations on this. Other patterns were interesting, although for simplicity’s sake they were not included. The three-word pattern is so strong that is perfectly possible to create titles that ‘work’ by a random process. Bizarre combinations that can be used to stimulate and encourage imaginative work occur, especially if the class is built up to the task step by step.

There are three very extensive word lists to play with, covering children’s book titles, fantasy book titles and thriller titles

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If we arrange the tiles in four rows, we can explore all the permutations simultaneously. Word a performs like an adjective and cannot be used on its own. We can try two forms without the article.

· The, Word A, Word B.

· World A, Word B.

· The, Word B.

· Word B

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The outcome is the ideal ICT lesson – minimal (but very clever) ICT input with maximum engagement and inspirations form pupils. The program will generate a random title each time you click Whiz.

Clicking copy, adds a copy of the current title to the clipboard. When you have finished. Simply go into a word processor and select paste and all the titles you have copied in the session will be up on screen. To speed things up, you can create more than one title at a time, as shown. This will give you multiple titles to choose from each time.

1. Drag tiles onto screen.

2. Arrange tiles as shown. Click whiz.

3. Click copy.

4. Click Whiz as many times as you choose.

5. Click copy to keep a record of the whiz. Paste the result into word.

6. Click edit to return to the arranging screen.

If you like part of a title. Click on the relevant tiles to ‘freeze’ the words and then Whiz again. Everything expect the frozen tiles will spin.